[alangpierce]

I think that better acknowledgement of mental health conditions is generally a good thing. There's too much stigma around something being labeled as "mental health", when really I think everyone should view their own mental health as a work in progress, just like how physical health always has some room for improvement.

For mild cases, I think it's fine to say that playing video games obsessively is potentially problematic (and in this case, I think "mental health" is the obvious category for that sort of problem), just like how not getting enough exercise can be problematic for physical health.

When it gets bad enough to the point that people feel out of control of their lives, it absolutely deserves to be called a mental health problem, and it would be incredibly frustrating to seek professional help and hear "your problem isn't real", when it clearly is causing suffering. Acknowledging that you have a mental health problem and seeking professional help is already hard enough.

Whether you use terms like "mental health disorder" or "mental illness" feels like just an issue of semantics, and my understanding is it's often more an indication of severity rather than being something fundamentally different. Just because you acknowledge a thing called "gaming disorder" doesn't mean it needs to be treated with medication or any kind of extensive treatment; you can still apply reason within any individual case about what the right course of action is. But if it's not even in the vocabulary, there's no reasonable way for the medical community to talk about it and understand it.